


Lyrium Notes

by thesecondseal



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Healing, Love, Lyrium, Lyrium Addiction, Lyrium Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 00:08:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4283184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecondseal/pseuds/thesecondseal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I will eventually move this back to Cullen Drabbles. (which will be getting a restructure in the coming months)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lyrium Notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen and Essa discuss lyrium. (She's a mage, the subject had to come up at some point. ;) ) This was written well ahead of the longfic but incorporated into chapter one of Nightmares.

“When was the last time you took lyrium?” Cullen asked.

He did not mean for the question to sound accusatory. She was a mage after all. Lyrium was much less of a danger to her and commonly taken to replenish a mage’s natural mana. Still, the query caught Essa as off guard as his sudden appearance in the stable. She was slow to turn to face him.

“I’m not entirely sure,” she said, shoving her hair from her face with a dusty hand.

Essa frowned thoughtfully. “I suppose when I brought Glenis back from the sloth demon.”

“In Ostwick?” His voice was carefully controlled, the disbelief held tightly between his back teeth.

Essa nodded slowly, brushed her hands off on the legs of her breeches and gave Geri a pat before exiting the Forder’s stall.

“Yes,” she said calmly. “In Ostwick.”

He was standing rigidly in the aisle of the stable, perfectly shined plate and impeccably kept hair utterly at odds with her most comfortable setting. There were days they both enjoyed her mussing that image, but today she knew he needed his armor.

“What’s this about, Cullen?”

He reached for her, but his hand shook and the hard fist he had to make to stop the trembling was not a grip he wanted on her. He took a step away, held his hands tightly before him, one hand on the pommel of his sword, the other holding tight to its wrist.

“It has—”

He broke off, paced a few steps, then started back toward her, long strides sharp and deliberate.

“It has a distinctive scent,” he stated as if he were discussing the weather.

Essa nodded. “A song,” she added. “Cloying and sweet like grave flowers.”

His eyes flashed in surprise and finally met hers.

“I thought—“ He stumbled for a moment, frowned. Renewed his pacing. “I have never heard a mage describe it so.”

She didn’t laugh at him. Didn’t ask him if he had asked many mages about their practices with or opinions on lyrium. If he hadn’t looked so lost and confused, she might have teased him, but there was something fragile about him pacing through the afternoon’s gilding, dust motes stirring around him in the barn air.

“The draught that we are given to enter the Fade is not the same as the mana restoratives,” Essa told him matter-of-factly. “Before I turned myself over to the Circle, I promised myself to never use the latter. I’m afraid my Harrowing confirmed my prejudices.”

He paused, a half dozen paces between them, and still Essa looked away.

“But you would have had to take that same dosage every time you went in to rescue someone who was trapped,” he mused quietly.

Her experiences at Ostwick’s Circle were not his favorite subjects.

“I did,” she confirmed. “And mage or not, I don’t doubt that the abuse would have eventually killed me.”

She laughed ruefully. “I thought it had more than once.”

Cullen’s pacing brought him back to her again. Essa lifted one hand slowly, giving him every opportunity to pull away as she placed her palm against his cheek. His eyes closed, and the sigh that followed took most of the tension from his body.

“You smell like hay and sunshine,” he murmured, so softly she almost missed the words.

“And horse and sweat,” she added, clinging to humor so that he wouldn’t hear the tears crowding her throat.

“Yes,” he agreed with a smile.

He opened his eyes, and reached up to take her hand in his. His grip was gentle and steady.  She raised her brows as he brought her palm to his lips, heedless of the remaining dirt she hadn’t been able to quite scrub away. Cullen placed a warm peck on the cleanest spot he could find.

“But you never smell of lyrium.” The words pressed against her skin. “And I had to know why.”

Her fingers curled gently, the tips dragging through his stubble.

“Because when I killed my brother, his eyes were still shining with blue fire,” she confessed. “And I swore it would never again leave such a mark on my life.”


End file.
